There are various environments wherein it is desirable or necessary to attach a pair of members, such as metal components, wherein the attachment is made at a generally planar portion of one of the members. A conventional form of attachment is by means of simple spot welds. However, if the generally planar attaching portion of the one member is of sheet metal material, spot welds cause blemishes in the sheet material on the side thereof opposite the location of the weld itself. Such blemishes are undesirable or unacceptable in applications wherein smooth, unblemished or polished surfaces are aesthetically required.
As an example, in the art of passenger conveyors, such as horizontal walkways or escalators, a passenger conveyor typically includes a series of passenger platforms or steps which are driven in an endless path between horizontally spaced landings. The conveyor includes a main body frame supported by the floors or other support structures of a building, for instance, and, usually, the overall passenger conveyor construction includes a balustrade about which hand rails are circulated in an endless path generally in synchronism with the movable platforms. Kick skirts run along opposite sides of the conveyor, with the passenger platforms being disposed between the skirts. The kick skirts usually are generally vertically oriented, and decks are inclined from the tops of the skirts, transversely outwardly to the bottoms of the balustrades on opposite sides of the conveyor. The decks are removable from the kick skirts to afford access to interior components of the conveyor so that the steps or platforms do not have to be removed. Various attachment systems are used to removably attach the decks to the skirts.
In this passenger conveyor environment, the kick skirts and decks typically are fabricated of sheet metal material, such as stainless steel. Escalators and walkways aesthetically require smooth, unblemished and polished surfaces on the inwardly exposed sides of the kick skirts and decks. When attachment clips are used between the skirts and decks, the attachment clips often are spot welded to one of the components and removably attached to the other component. Spot welding causes blemishes and requires significant polishing and finishing of the inwardly exposed surfaces to remove the blemishes. Such polishing and finishing is time consuming and is not cost effective.
As an alternative to spot welding attachment systems, adhesive glues provide potential for an "unblemished" attachment system. However, adhesive glues are very limited in strength when subjected to a "peel" type of loading which generates extremely high tensile stresses typical of the type of connections described above.
This invention is directed to solving the above problems by providing an adhesive attachment system which is designed such that, when a pair of members are attached, the system eliminates the extreme "peel" stresses and develops a more proportional tension stress in the attachment.